How it all began - Hornby-Dublo, BR(WR) and railtours

It all started when I was about two years old, with the traditional train set (Hornby Dublo 3-rail) and the Thomas the Tank Engine books. Then I was taken to Wolverhampton Low Level to meet various people from their trains and/or see them off. Things got worse. The train set expanded. The visits to Low Level were ever more exciting. At school there was talk of trainspotting (this was the 1950s, it was fashionable then). More visits to Wolverhampton Low Level - seen from a viewpoint nearly six decades on, everything at Low Level was clean and on time, and had a copper capped chimney. Possibly this viewpoint is equipped with rose-tinted (or perhaps GWR locomotive green-tinted) spectacles. Saturday trips to Stafford, where if you were lucky you got there in time for the up 'Ulster Express'. Visits to Tamworth, punctuated by shouts of 'Semi on the main'. Visits to Crewe Works, where if you were really lucky you saw a Main Line Diesel (and if you were even luckier, you didn't). Memorably, a visit to Stafford Road shed and a ride to Oxley on 4912 (thanks, Dad).

Then off to school down south where the best train of the day was the 1712 to Bournemouth with a Banbury or Oxford 'Modified Hall', sure footed and noisy unlike the Bulleid Pacifics handling most of the faster passenger traffic. Here the rot set in. I bought a set of timetables each year and not long before I left school I thought it would be interesting to mark the timetable map with the lines I had travelled on (by now it included Hayling Island - thanks to the late John Manisty - Ventnor, Bromyard, Ruabon to Barmouth, Gloucester to Hereford, ...). Of course, I soon noticed that there were one or two lines where the map in the timetable showed a service but it was a bit difficult to find the trains in the timetable. For some peculiar reason I remember the first one I noticed - Maindee East Junction to Maindee North Junction. Unfortunately I hadn't seen the light yet and I carried on charging about on main/well known lines. Like the GC from Marylebone to Rugby, the Somerset & Dorset, the Waverley Route - well, perhaps a glimmer.

In 1967 I went to university and there I fell into seriously bad company. Gricers. Gricers? People whose ambition was to travel over every possible metre of track. In those days one's horizons tended to end at the Channel and besides, I still hadn't done large swathes of the UK. The last nail in the coffin of sanity was sharpened by reading one of the H.W.Paar books about the Forest of Dean in the college library when I was supposed to be revising. In May 1969 the Branch Line Society advertised a railtour to Parkend, amongst other places, and that was it. Railtours filled the next 20 years, though towards the end they were thinning out and brake van trips were becoming a thing of the past. Llanharry, Newcastle Emlyn, Yarmouth Quay, Ardingly, Leiston, Sandside, the Blyth and Tyne, Fraserburgh, Crianlarich Lower, Burghead, Beckermet, Trafford Park, Pensnett, Radstock, Meledor Mill, you name it.

And then came Europe ...

By the end of the 1980s I'd spent a great deal of time rushing about the UK travelling on every British Rail line that I could. Quite successfully - most of what I had left hardly qualified as a line, being mostly sidings, industrial lines, private connections and things of that sort. There are many gricers who will pursue these things in minute detail (and sometimes minute size, down to anything that can be ridden on), but that's not my preferred focus.

Although this was all great fun (strange what motivates people, but there you go), the well eventually began to dry out and you got fed up with paying forty or fifty quid to do the Wibblewick Coal Concentration Depot Up Down Relief Crossover. About the same time my children were growing up fast, and pressure to go abroad was increasing. In 1988 we ventured to France, my first non-business trip (and only the second of any sort) for about 18 years. Everybody was very friendly. The food was much better than at home. I enjoyed it. I saw some railways...

It took some time to get my head round all this. One or two weekend trips to France were undertaken. In 1991 my wife and I ventured to Brugge. I had this idea that Belgian beer wasn't all bad. The first one I tried was Westmalle Tripel. Case proved. - see other pages (when I get round to doing them)... Then we went to Rotterdam. We travelled on a train to Amsterdam. Then we went to Germany. We looked at the Köln-Trier line. It all looked rather interesting. In 1991 I decided to dip a toe into the (Euro)gricing waters and had an interesting 4-day bash in France, the obvious choice as it's the nearest and uses the only language of which I have any knowledge at all. That, I suppose, set the scene - although from that day to this I've only done a couple of preserved lines, some cross border lines from neighbouring countries, and one railtour in France.

In 1992 a chance arose for another little jaunt. I rang a friend and asked if the Harz system was still steam. Yes, he said, and don't forget about Bad Doberan, Radeburg, Zittau, etc., etc. I went (by car, and just to take photographs, you understand). Foolishly, I had a ride from Bad Doberan to Kühlungsborn and back on a nice summer evening. I made it worse by doing the Zittau lines, and Radeburg to Moritzburg. The next year I went back to ride on the narrow gauge lines. Instead of using a car I got an Interrail, did everything by train, went to Prague, went to Wolzstyn (Poland).

From there on I was doomed (amazingly, that friend is still a friend. I suppose in his defence I have to say he can't have known what he was starting!). The BLS ran a trip in Luxembourg. ADL were running trips in Belgium. Branch line bashing was just like it used to be. Thousands of kilometres of main lines were begging to be griced. Branch lines were closing, especially in eastern Germany. And that was how my European travels began.

Nearly thirty years later I've turned from gricer to Eurogricer (though still interested in UK railways) and I've often been accompanied on my travels by my extraordinarily patient wife, sometimes referred to in the notes as 'Mrs EG'. When we first met over half a century ago, and even on that French holiday in 1988, she cannot possibly have realised what she was in for!

You'll find a list of trips on the index page here, or just pick from the 'The Tales' menu at the top of the page.

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